The Protect Education Act — or Proposition 212 as it would have been known on the ballot — is no longer up for the people’s vote this November.
The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld a decision from a lower court that disqualified a number of the campaign’s signatures. Protect Education, run by public school advocates and union members, collected around 420,000 signatures of support, which put it in a seemingly safe position for ballot validation. About 256,000 is the minimum required for proposition campaign signatures.
The courts, however, disqualified tens of thousands of signatures due to double-counting. On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld that decision.
Save Our Schools Arizona is a nonpartisan advocacy group and one of the campaign’s primary proponents. In a statement, President Beth Lewis said, “The lengths that the voucher lobby went to invalidate signatures with scorched-earth legal objections shows just how terrified they are of Arizona voters actually having a say in how our tax dollars are spent.”
The Protect Education Act committee challenged the lower court judge’s ruling, arguing the number of invalidated signatures was miscalculated.
Proposition 212 would have added an income cap of $150,000 for program eligibility. It also aimed to administer standardized tests and require fingerprint clearance for staff in voucher funded schools.
“While today’s decision comes as a disappointment to hundreds of thousands of Arizonans, I know voters will stand with our public schools in November,” said Terry Leyba Ruiz, the Democratic nominee for Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. Ruiz has made voucher oversight a top priority in her platform.
Arizona House Democrats also issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
“Cowardly Republicans worked overtime and spared no expense to protect the rampant fraud, waste and abuse of ESA private school vouchers, and a majority on the Supreme Court ruled in their favor,” they stated.
More than 101,000 students use the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts voucher program, which cost the state more than $1 billion last year.
